


Fate in the Balance

by screenplayed



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Ultimates
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Non-Linear Narrative, Recreational Drug Use, Soulmates, Uniform Kink, Unreliable Narrator, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:13:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25485241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screenplayed/pseuds/screenplayed
Summary: Maybe this is the price the universe demands, to have Steve here with him, now. Steve should be long gone, his time run out decades past, while Tony should have decades ahead of him still. But fate turned the hour glass. Time must balance out.
Relationships: Steve Roger/Tony stark (one sided), Steve Rogers & Tony Stark, Tony Stark/Others
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15
Collections: Team Angst





	Fate in the Balance

**Author's Note:**

> An angst fill for [The Steve Tony Games!](https://stevetonygames.dreamwidth.org/2224.html)  
> This is for bingo prompt: Unrequited Love

He runs his fingers over the helmet, pitted and paint scratched, leather padding and straps cracked with age, but still oiled and well cared for. Even with his eyes closed he knows the exact shade of blue, the reflective quality of the A, still standing out in stark relief after all these years.

He knows everything about this helmet, the uniform, the legend. Captain America has been an obsession for him all his life. From his first words, his first memories, he's been drawn to him. Maybe even earlier, when he was bullied for space and resources in the womb. Maybe when he was still threads of coalescing actions and probabilities.

Fate.

This has to be fate.

This helmet isn't his too keep, never was. He's just been keeping it safe all this time for its real owner.

He breathes the smell of oil and metal in one last time before gently placing it inside the box.

* * *

He's everything Tony could have hoped for. Broad in shoulders and thick in the thighs. The uniform fits him like a glove, and Tony slides his hands slowly down the red, white and blue as he pushes him against the wall.

The man starts to speak and Tony shushes him, kisses him wet and sloppy.

He sinks to his knees and buries his face into straining leather and the smell of musk. Nips the zipper with his teeth.

Captain America, he thinks, head fuzzy and spinning as he takes the man all the way to the root, tickles his nose in dark brown curls. He lost his gag reflex a long time ago.

The man moans, and moans, and moans.

Tony digs his fingers into leather and muscle and let's his own choked breathing drown the voice out.

* * *

A picture in black and white, pinned to a light board.

That's all it takes for Tony's life to end.

* * *

Fury calls Tony, he's seen Tony's test flight.

Tony hangs up.

* * *

A man lies upon the table, all the colors wrong, wrong, wrong.

But still right.

The uniform hangs off him in tatters, the waters did their work to warp and distort the red, white and blue, rotten leathers and faded pigments, warped and distorted the man's skin green--yellow sallow mixed in awful tones with chilled blue and purple lips.

Fury watched Tony, watches him, watches him.

Maybe Tony is supposed to say something. Do something. Sleeping beauty is right there in front of him and he's completely lost.

Maybe Tony should kiss him awake.

Maybe Tony is the one sleeping.

He can't remember when yesterday ended and today began, only remembers the hot burn of scotch down his throat, the tight clench of a cunt, the burning behind his eyes. Heat everywhere, inside and out.

His mother warned him he would burn himself out too young.

For the first time in weeks he feels something besides the haze of alcohol and his own impending doom. Maybe he was burning because this man was freezing, a ying-yang of the universe. Fate, balancing them out.

The heart monitor blips.

He feels euphoric.

You're going to tell me yes, Fury says, no doubt in the answer.

* * *

It's a plain, sturdy wooden box, without embellishment or gilding or satin pillows.

Tony never would've stood for something so plain to be a heroes final resting place, but the coffin had been picked out long ago from someone with more say than him. What was the point? A corpse won't care about the thread count of the lining or the gold plating on the rails. This is all it needs.

Just a box.

* * *

Jarvis finds him curled up on the floor of the penthouse, surrounded by empty bottles of liquid reprieve.

The room spins around him as Jarvis tries to help him to the bed. His head throbs.

Are you trying to drink yourself to death? Jarvis wants to know in that way of his. Exasperation and anger and sadness and guilt all tied together.

I'm already dead, he thinks, or says, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

There's a mass of cells in his head, biological warfare ticking down the clock as assuredly as a time bomb.

Tony prefers bombs. At least those he has a chance of disarming.

* * *

Fury calls Tony.

_Don't hang up. Trust me when I say you'll want to see this._

* * *

The dust settles around them and Tony sees Steve standing atop the crater's edge, the red, white and blue vibrant even under of layers of dust and blood.

Steve is a monument, a living statue of everything Tony wishes he can be and accomplish before his time runs out.

Captain America turns to meet his stare and gives a curt nod.

Okay.

Yeah.

Maybe they can do this.

* * *

The words slide from Tony's lips, lubricated by victory and good company and the best booze from the cellar.

He never planned on saying them.

Steve sits across from him on the couch, eyes steady and unmoved as Tony taps the side of his head, pointing right to his future demise. A tumor.

Six months to five years, the doctors said. He counts his time in days, not in years.

He expects pity and placation, but Steve just puts a firm hand on Tony's wrist and doesn't say a word.

And oh, _Oh!_ Steve knows what it's like, watching the clock tick down to your own end. He's seen it on a launch pad, on a rocket, in a fireball in the sky and the icy grip of the ocean.

Steve knows. Steve sees that what he's trying to accomplish is not a last ditch grab for fame and glory.

Steve sees him.

He never once tells Tony he feels sorry for him.

* * *

He makes him wear the suit and forbids him from talking. In return he allows him to poor ambrosia down his throat and use his body as he pleases.

Soft and pliant and molasses slow, everything iron man shouldn't be.

But he's not Iron Man right now, has no skin of metal or heart of lighting. And that's not Captain America setting bruises on Tony's hips and squelching his way into his body.

But if he closes his eyes and pulls from the bottle, let's the edges go fuzzy, the scent of leather and oil and sweat is almost enough to convince him otherwise.

* * *

Everyone thinks Captain America is serious and stern and has a stick up his ass. They're right. But Steve Rogers is sarcastic and dry and a little shit stirrer. He pretends to understand the future (the present) less than he actually does, just so people will make fools of themselves trying to explains things, then squirm in embarrassment when Steve shows them up.

There was coffee back in my day, he quips as the coffee maker sputters out a cup.

He uses the tablet Tony gives him (I know Shield gave you one, but do you really want them monitoring _everything_ you do?) to send Tony wise-ass comments during team meetings when everyone thinks he's just reviewing reports ( _no one_ thinks Tony is reviewing reports).

Fury will try and spin a tale of subterfuge and black ops. Steve blows through his steam and ask who's face he's supposed to break. Fury sputters every time.

The best thing about Steve is the sparkle he gets in his eye when Tony fails to cover up his laughter.

* * *

It's indignant, chocking on his own bile while Steve watches him flush his life down the toilet. His limbs shake like a bad trip come down. Buying time by selling his dignity.

He's burning, flushed in the face all down to his chest, there are tears in his eyes and acid in his throat.

Suddenly a cold hand is on the back of his neck. Steve is there, awkward and too big to be gentle, but he's the only steady thing in Tony's vibrating world. The cold that offsets the fire.

Maybe their souls were forged at the same time, together, melted in the hottest furnace and dunked into the coldest waters, one hourglass with them on opposite ends.

Maybe this is the price the universe demands, to have Steve here with him, now. Steve should be long gone, his time run out decades past, while Tony should have decades ahead of him still. But fate turned the hour glass. Time must balance out.

Maybe Tony's life isn't going down the toilet, maybe it's flowing into Steve instead.

As Steve's arms settle around him and he lifts Tony up, tucks him into bed and runs cool fingers through Tony's sweaty hair, he thinks it's a fair price to pay.

* * *

The ship hits the ground.

* * *

Steve opens the box and his hands are roaming, the way Tony's hands have, over the dome of the helmet, tracing the A with a finger.

It's well worth the smile it gets him. Boyish exuberance and aged fondness, like finding a childhood teddy bear.

Tony will buy all the teddy bears in the world for another glimpse of that smile.

* * *

They recline on the rooftop of the penthouse, pointing to where they think constellations should be, faded out by man-made lights and oil slicked air. soon enough Tony is making up constellations of his own.

_that's Orion's Erection_

_There's no such thing_

_Is too. You slept through that one, Cap._

He strains to here Steve's little puffs of breath and rumbling laughter, the kind that comes from the back of his throat, the kind you feel more than hear.

Tony watches Steve watch the sky, and it hits him hard enough to crush the breath from his lungs.

This is love.

Steve talks on like nothing's changed, like Tony's whole world hasn't spun and twisted round like the armor in an uncontrolled free fall.

Maybe he should tell him, maybe he should pull Steve towards him and coax his mouth open, pour all his feelings out with his breath.

Tony thinks of the hourglass.

His six months are up, another eighteen slid right by with them. The sand is running down, and he's being run down with them, not a full night's sleep or steady erection to offer up. Just time.

When Steve raises a questioning brow in Tony's drawn out silence he response with the only thing he can give.

He tells Steve it's all been worth it.

* * *

He wakes up covered in dried come and bruises and blood. Alone.

* * *

They save the world.

He isn't sure he's ever felt so terrible in his life. The armor is dented in ways that make it hard to move his arms. There's bile in his mouth, blood on his face, and the pain in his head is so bad he lost vision in his left eye a while ago. The world around him won't stop spinning.

Suddenly Steve is there with his hands on Tony's neck and their foreheads pressed together, grinning like a loon with teeth painted red.

The world is spinning around him but Tony holds on and together they laugh

And laugh

And laugh

Tony's never felt more alive.

* * *

The club is sleazy and loud and discreet and everything Tony's looking for. The young man that presses his chest to Tony's back as he gestures for the bartender is long and corded and pale sunshine hair--he hopes his dick is the same way--and exactly what Tony is looking for.

Tony meets him in the restroom and let's the kid bend him over the sink. But in florescents his hair is dull and his eyes are brown and he calls Tony names.

He walks out feeling too hot and in need of another drink.

* * *

Tony has responsibilities, a company, charities, labs, employees and a handful of friends. He knows he should be taking care of things in the small amount of time he has left.

Instead he fucks off in the middle of a meetings and skips two more to drive out to the triskelion.

He let's Steve put his mustang through her paces, and it's an engineering feat that they're both alive because Steve's driving is just _awful_ and he nearly crashes twice. Tony feels giddy to have found something the perfect human specimen is complete shit at.

With the wind in his hair and Steve's laughter in his ear, Tony thinks this would be a nice way to go.

* * *

They won.

Ships streaking down from the sky like falling stars, crumpling and exploding like little suns. The cheering over the com-link is deafening but he still makes out Fury saying

_He did it, sonofabitch did it!_

And panic fills him because Steve is on the mothership. Steve is still in there! The repulsers push as hard as they can, but the right leg is on the fritz, took too much damage, and he's weaving through the sky in some twisted dance and not going _fast enough._

* * *

Saving the world is tough work, and Steve goes through uniforms faster than Tony goes through young blond men.

Tony takes one of the spares.

* * *

They recline on the rooftop of the penthouse, stars bright in stark relief of the pitch black all around them, silence, except for their breathing.

Tony watches Steve watch him back. He wonders if the smile on his face is just as pained.

He never got to say. He never got to tell him. He wonders if he knows.

This is his chance, to stretch his fingers and and coax that mouth towards him, to pour out the words, pour them into Steve's mouth, breath him back in.

But when Tony touches Steve's cheek it's cold as ice. When he opens his mouth only sand pours out.

He wakes up.

* * *

There's Steve, as wrong colored and still as the first time he saw him lying on a table, dressed in a brand new uniform without wear, colors garishly vibrant against the pine wood and everything is wrong, wrong, wrong.

But still right.

He presses his forehead to Steve's and it's the coldest he's ever been. Tony can't stop the tears from burning tracks down his cheeks to land on Steve's own.

He feels cold inside. Dead inside. Maybe he's a corpse that hasn't realized it should stop moving. Maybe Steve took his soul with him when wherever it is he went.

* * *

He doesn't make anyone wear the suit. Instead he says fuck hard. Then he says fuck harder.

Too many drinks have gone by for him to remember, and in his haze he knows the door is opening and closing, he knows there are more hands than one two he invited in with him. Holding him down, holding him open.

Too many drinks have gone by for him to care.

He opens his mouth and they put a pill on his tongue. He opens his mouth and they put a cock on his tongue.

They make it hurt

Teeth and nails and knuckles

But Tony can't feel anything past the numb

_he wonder_

_is this_

_what_ _freezing_

_feels_

_like_

* * *

Remission, they say. Reduction, they say. A miracle, they say.

You have more time. Tony laughs

And laughs

And laughs

Until he starts to cry.

When he leaves the doctor's office no one will meet his eyes.

Fate, he thinks.

Somewhere in the universe he knows there is an hourglass forged of two souls. But fate turned the hourglass. Time must balance out.

He doesn't think it's a fair price to pay.

* * *

He runs his fingers over the helmet, pitted and paint scratched. Even with his eyes closed he knows the exact shade of blue, the reflective quality of the A, standing out in stark relief.

He knows everything about this helmet, he made it, after all. More than that, he knows ever battle it made its way into and out of. Knows ever repair it's undergone. Knows how many times Steve dropped it to the ground after a fight so he could pull Tony in close.

This helmet isn't his too keep, never was. It needs to stay with its real owner.

He breathes the smell of oil and metal in one last time before gently placing it inside the box.


End file.
